PEOPLE AND ANIMALS

EXAMPLE 1
A postcard featuring a cute puppy sitting in a policeman's hat advertising a Scottish police force's new telephone number has sparked outrage from Muslims.   

Tayside Police caused uproar in the Muslim community after they released this advertisement featuring police puppy Rebel sitting in a hat

The advert has upset Muslims because dogs are considered ritually unclean and has sparked such anger that some shopkeepers in Dundee have refused to display the advert.

EXAMPLE 2
2014

Malaysian politicians and religious leaders have attacked the use of Scottie dogs during the Commonwealth Games opening ceremony, claiming it was disrespectful to Muslims.

Around 40 Scottie dogs were used in the opening ceremony in Glasgow last Wednesday to lead teams around Celtic Park.

The dogs, which all wore tartan dog coats with the name of each team on them, were widely praised on social media, with many people stating they thought they had "stolen the show". Hamish, who led out the Scotland team, received one of the biggest cheers of the night.

Judy Murray tweeted after the ceremony: "Scottie dogs in tartan coats at CG opening ceremony. Barkingly brilliant."

However, not everyone was as impressed. Political and religious leaders in Malaysia have claimed the use of dogs connected to Muslim countries was "disrespectful".

BUT BEFORE YOU RANT...THERE IS ANOTHER PERSPECTIVE

Traditionally, dogs have been seen as unclean and impure, with Islamic thinkers warning Muslims to avoid contact with the loyal animals.

Despite the Prophet Muhammad’s kindness to animals, including notable stories of the Prophet caring for puppies, it has often been considered that dogs are unclean and are incompatible with those that practice Islam.

Yet, a new fatwa by Egypt’s former Grand Mufti Ali Gomaa challenges this traditional view, stating that there is a misconception about dogs being impure and ritually unclean (najis).

Sheikh Gomaa, who was Grand Mufti for a decade of the Sunni Islamic world’s top Islamic authority, is one of the most respected Islamic scholars and clerics in the world.

During his television show which discusses Islam’s teachings, the Sheikh stated that there is nothing wrong with keeping a dog inside your house as a dog is not impure.

sports violence

SAO PAULO (Reuters) - One man has been arrested in northern Brazil after a referee who fatally stabbed an amateur player over his refusal to leave the field was decapitated by a mob, police said on Saturday.



Referee Octavio da Silva, 20, stabbed player Josenir dos Santos, 30, on June 30 after dos Santos refused to heed his order to leave, police spokesman Kena Souza told Reuters.


A mob then turned on da Silva, killing him before severing his head in the remote town of Pio XII, named after a former pope. A 27-year-old man was arrested on July 2 and police in the regional headquarters of Santa Ines will continue to investigate the incident, Souza said.


Brazil has made significant strides in lowering homicide rates in recent years, as millions were lifted from poverty, but it faces mounting pressures to show it is a safe place for tourists before 12 Brazilian cities host the 2014 soccer World Cup and Rio de Janeiro the Olympic Games in 2016.

about north korean soccer players

Four North Korean players who tried to defect from North Korea were back training with the squad today.


Kim Myong-won, Kim Kyong-il, An Choi-hyok and Pak Sung-hyok tried to defect before their opening group game against Brazil, but the players mysteriously turned up for training Friday much to the surprise of the World Cup Journalists.

NOTE: THEY PROBABLY DIDNT DEFECT BECAUSE THEY WOULD BE THREATENED - THEIR ENTIRE FAMILY, INCLUDING COUSINS ETC COULD BE TORTURED AND KILLED

ANOTHER ARTICLE
In June, the North Korean soccer team dropped ignominiously out of the World Cup without a point after conceding 12 goals in three games. Since the players returned home, they have been publicly shamed, according to reports. The manager has been forced to become a construction worker, and there are fears for his safety.
North Korea is one of the most oppressive regimes on earth. The soccer team's first game was not televised in the country, for fear of embarrassment. But when the team put up a remarkably good show against Brazil, narrowly losing 2-1, hopes were raised and the second game against Portugal was shown. The team lost 7-0. And then lost again, 3-0, in their last game against the Ivory Coast.
According to reports from Radio Free Asia and the South Korean media, earlier this month the team and manager were forced onto a stage at the People's Palace of Culture in front of 400 government officials, students, and journalists. According to the Guardian, the athletes were subjected to a "six-hour barrage of criticism" for their poor performances that was led by a TV commentator and sports minister Pak Myong-chol. The only players who missed out on the humiliation were Jung Tae-se and An Yong-hak, who are based in Japan.
The players were then asked to step up in turn and publicly criticize manager Kim Jong-hun, who had apparently been singled out for punishment. He has been forced into a construction job because, it is thought, his team's failure is seen as a personal betrayal of Kim Jong-un, the son of current leader Kim Jong-il. The Guardian reports that plans were in place, in the case of a good performance at the tournament, to credit the team's success to the heir apparent to help ease the transition of power. Instead, there are reportedly fears for the manager's safety.

INDIA, THE COMMONWEALTH GAMES AND...MANY QUESTIONS

MY MOTHERLAND - POLITICIANS - IF ONLY YOU HAD CHOSEN TO SOLVE THE MYRIAD OF PROBLEMS PLAGUING YOUR LAND FIRST....


The 2010 Commonwealth Games in New Delhi may have been intended to showcase India as a cosmopolitan emerging economic powerhouse, but with just 11 days to go, the event threatens to become a debacle of epic proportions. The collapse of a footbridge outside the flagship Jawaharlal Nehru stadium on Tuesday (which injured 30 people) and the caving-in of the ceiling at the Games' weightlifting venue the following day appeared to symbolize the end of India's dream of hosting the "best ever" Commonwealth Games. Advanced parties dispatched to the venues by a number of participating countries have been so outraged by the hygiene and safety conditions at the athletes' village that they have threatened to withdraw from the event, and Commonwealth Games Federation President Michael Fennel will on Thursday hold emergency talks with India's Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, in the hope of saving the Games from degenerating into a farce. But Indian officials believe the complaints are wildly exaggerated, and some say unrealistic standards are being demanded of the organizers.

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2020960,00.html#ixzz11ISYIUnF

you're a sport. he is sporting.... but sports means something so different now

About sports

• In the era of millionaire sportsmen and million-dollar payouts for sporting successes, winning has become paramount.
1. Lose a match and you could lose your job.
2. Lose a match and sponsors and backers also lose faith in you.


• Former Liverpool manager Bill Shankly, in 1981, famously said: "Some people think football is a matter of life and death. I assure you, it's much more serious than that."
1. as Arsenal crashed 1-3 at home to Manchester United, the tragedy was not so much the Gunners' exit from the Champions League football tournament.

Rather, it was the death of Suleiman Omondi, thousands of kilometres away in Kenya.

The Arsenal fan hanged himself after leaving a local pub - distraught that his team, which promised a spectacular show to overturn a 0-1 first-leg deficit, caved in so easily.

Indeed for him, winning was the only thing that mattered at the time

• One needed to look only at the reactions of the players to realise what not winning meant to Chelsea players.

1German midfielder Michael Ballack screamed in the face of the referee after he turned down a penalty appeal.

Striker Didier Drogba had to be restrained from following the referee into the dressing room area after his claims were also ignored.

Such violent reactions from players – shows that more than reputation is at stake…


IS SPORTS MORE ABOUT MONEY AND NATIONAL REPUTATION THAN ANYTHING ELSE?

one-event wonder

BEIJING - JUST six months after the breathtaking opening of the Beijing Olympics, the Bird's Nest stadium is looking a lot less glamorous.
The paint is peeling and stains have appeared on its famous lattice design.

Accelerating the deterioration of the iconic National Stadium is the absence of a permanent tenant. It has not hosted a big event since the Paralympics last September and is in real danger of becoming a big white Chinese elephant.

'It's such a pity that it has been empty all these months,' said tourist Gao Qiuling, who was visiting from the northern Tianjin port city, as she toured the venue with her family last Friday.

Visitors like her, paying 50 yuan (S$11) each to enter the stadium, are the only ones warming the Nest these days.

The city's main football club Guo'an backed out of a deal to make the stadium its home because the rent was too high. That deprived it of an anchor tenant.

Sport is driven by television

the straits times Sep 6, 2008 Saturday




possible essay question?

But quality invariably suffers when matches are played past midnight

NEW York, they say, is a bit like Singapore, a city that never sleeps.
And, as Wednesday night became Thursday morning, it was literally so for 23,000 spectators and two players at the Arthur Ashe Stadium.

The clock struck 2am before Rafael Nadal, the best tennis player on the planet, beat America's own Mardy Fish in the quarter-finals of the US Open.
'Thanks everyone for being here until after two o'clock,' said Nadal into a microphone.
'For sure, it was not the best of conditions to play a tennis match. But, sometimes the schedules are tough, like here and in Australia. So, sometimes, it is difficult, but you just accept it and go on the court and try your best.'
He is a good sport and a great champion. But did New Yorkers get value for money simply because the match went on into the night?
Or were they deprived of seeing the greatest spectacle in the modern game because the players were obliged to perform at a time when all good athletes are tucked up in bed, preserving body and mind for contests to come?
This match, intended for prime time CBS television, started after it was scheduled to finish, with midnight approaching.

Nadal took 18 minutes to get into the swing of it and win his first game.
He dropped the opening set to a gung-ho American, who is not on his level.

'The night atmosphere here is always amazing,' said Nadal diplomatically. ' but I prefer to finish a little earlier.'

For those already hooked on English Premier League football, the habit of staying up all night watching live sport on telly is almost a way of life.

Formula One, of course, is not thinking entirely of you when it brings its circus to your streets.
The timing is for the benefit of global TV.
It makes sense to run the race in the dead of night when traffic disruption is at a minimum. And the engines, not to mention the drivers in the cockpits, could be relieved at the relative drop in sweltering air temperature.

the US is driven by television.
Saturday gets the audience ratings up for the semi-finals, Sunday for the final.
If that means weary guys slogging out five-hour five setters on successive nights, never mind the quality, clock the hours and count the winnings.
In case you are wondering, the men and the women get the same incentive - US$1.5 million (S$2.2 million) to each winner, US$750,000 to the runner-up, plus endorsements.
It is just the fans who get short-changed if the champs are at less than full throttle.

GUO Jingjing has looks and talent. Her face sells McDonald's and Coca-Cola. Her appearances in the pages of gossip magazines have transfixed the Chinese public.
She earns more than any other Chinese female athlete: 15 million yuan (S$3 million) a year.
What the double-Olympic and eight-time world diving champion does not have is control - over her life.
'I don't have that much feeling any more,' she says, although some say she is still pining for her lost love: Tian Liang, China's exiled prince of diving.
After winning golds in Athens four years ago, the couple were hounded by the paparazzi. They were coy about their relationship but everyone knew about 'Liang Jingjing', a play on their names that means 'glittering'.
But when they started cashing in on their popularity, their romance failed to survive the Chinese system.
They were kicked out by Zhou Jihong, the diving gold medallist in 1984 and director of China's dominant diving team for 'excessive commercial activities'.
Jingjing apologised, handed over part of her earnings and was allowed back.
According to Zhou, who tells her charges when to train, where to go, what to think, who to like, why to care, Tian did not go crawling back.
He never returned, retired last year, became the star of the TV series The Cowherd and the Weaver Girl and got married.
'We chose different paths,' Guo says.

Sensitive sites blocked at press centre

IN BEIJING - FIRST, it was the air pollution.
Now, the ever-growing numbers of journalists in town to cover the
Beijing Olympics are taking the organisers to task over the blocking of websites critical of China.
Internet censorship is routine in China, but what upset the media was that the restrictions were not lifted for the Games' Main Press Centre (MPC), a move which journalists said reneged on Beijing's earlier promise of unfettered online access.
Yesterday, a press conference on cultural preservation was hijacked by reporters who peppered Chinese officials with repeated questions on why they could not access the websites for rights group Amnesty International, the Falungong sect and the Tibetan government-in-exile.
One reporter also wanted to know if Chinese security officials were monitoring e-mail and other information being sent from the MPC.
Mr Sun Weide, a spokesman for the Beijing Olympics organisers, stuck to a vaguely worded assurance that journalists would be given 'sufficient and convenient Internet access'.
'Your reporting on the Games will not be affected,' he maintained.
He also suggested that websites related to the Falungong were blocked because the sect had been outlawed by the Chinese government.
Unappeased, reporters asked him why other websites, such as those for Amnesty International and Hong Kong's Apple Daily newspaper, were also blocked, although these organisations were not outlawed.
The spokesman merely maintained that he did not have information about why specific websites were blocked.
Senior International Olympic Committee (IOC) members said in April that China had given assurances that the 21,500 media personnel accredited for the Games would be given unrestricted Internet access during the duration of the Games from Aug 8 to 24.
Yesterday, IOC press chief Kevan Gosper said that the IOC had cut a deal with China to allow the blocking of sensitive websites from media during the Beijing Games.
'I...now understand that some IOC officials negotiated with the Chinese that some sensitive sites would be blocked on the basis that they were not considered Games-related,' the Australian told Reuters.
He said: 'I regret that it now appears that BOCOG (the Beijing Organising Committee for the Olympic Games) has announced that there will be limitations on website access during Games time.

nike or speedo

NIKE will allow its swimmers to wear Speedo's LZR Racer instead of its own suit at the Beijing Olympics.
Nike spokesman Dean Stoyer said on Wednesday the company felt it was fair to extend the offer it made in June allowing its swimmers to wear Speedo's suit at the US Olympic Trials.
'It is about putting their performance and their focus first,' Stoyer said. 'This is what they have trained for. It is the biggest moment of their lives.'
Four swimmers who signed with Nike, which has some of the industry's tightest controls on athlete contract agreements, are heading to the Olympics.
Speedo's LZR Racer has caused major waves this year. Since its launch in February, swimmers have broken dozens of world records and athletes not sponsored by Speedo have clamoured to wear it.
It also caused some backlash. One Italian coach accused Speedo of technological doping. And Tyr Sport Inc. sued Speedo in May, alleging in its lawsuit that the company conspired with the US swimming federation to stifle competition and lure top athletes away from other sponsors.
British-owned Speedo says the lawsuit is baseless. --

nike or speedo

NIKE will allow its swimmers to wear Speedo's LZR Racer instead of its own suit at the Beijing Olympics.
Nike spokesman Dean Stoyer said on Wednesday the company felt it was fair to extend the offer it made in June allowing its swimmers to wear Speedo's suit at the US Olympic Trials.
'It is about putting their performance and their focus first,' Stoyer said. 'This is what they have trained for. It is the biggest moment of their lives.'
Four swimmers who signed with Nike, which has some of the industry's tightest controls on athlete contract agreements, are heading to the Olympics.
Speedo's LZR Racer has caused major waves this year. Since its launch in February, swimmers have broken dozens of world records and athletes not sponsored by Speedo have clamoured to wear it.
It also caused some backlash. One Italian coach accused Speedo of technological doping. And Tyr Sport Inc. sued Speedo in May, alleging in its lawsuit that the company conspired with the US swimming federation to stifle competition and lure top athletes away from other sponsors.
British-owned Speedo says the lawsuit is baseless

beijing olympics - clean up

LIKE countless other Beijing prostitutes, 'Kelly' had viewed the Olympic rings as akin to dollar signs, expecting a big pay-day as the city shifts into party mode for next month's Games.
But those dreams are in doubt now thanks to a police offensive aimed at preventing the city's rollicking sex industry from tarnishing the Games.

'The police are suddenly much more formidable now. We have to be very careful,' the waif-like 23-year-old said, stirring a watered-down drink in a dim bar frequented by sex workers but notably empty on a recent Saturday night.

The crackdown has closed up many of the most notorious bars and other prostitution centres.

Kelly, who hails from nearby Hebei province and declined to give her Chinese name, said many of her fellow sex workers had recently been thrown in jail before being sent back to their home provinces.

'We have to be careful. If I get thrown out of Beijing, I won't be able to get back in because police are putting up roadblocks into Beijing,' said Kelly, who formerly prowled hotel lobbies but was chased out by management.

The crackdown is part of a hurried makeover aimed at sweeping the city's less savoury elements under the rug, at least until the August 8-24 Games conclude, and which has seen campaigns against drug offenders and even spitting and queue-jumping by the general public.

Tighter controls and more frequent checks on the visas of foreigners - apparently aimed at preventing security threats to the Games - have also cleared out the many prostitutes from neighbouring Mongolia and Russia, Kelly said.

'We are closed for fire inspection. Come back after the Olympics,' said a man who answered the phone at Maggie's, a bar in the city's embassy district normally filled nightly with freelancing Mongolian hookers.

Its front door has been padlocked for about three months for the 'fire inspection'.

Basically stamped out during the puritanical Mao Zedong era, prostitution flourishes in today's more open China, with estimates of the country's sex workers ranging as high as US$10 million (S$13.7 million) or more.

Sex workers ply their trade with virtual impunity in bars, massage spas, karaoke parlours and the 'barber shops' that are found in many Beijing back alleys and which have nothing to do with haircuts.

Male travellers typically receive phone calls shortly after checking into Chinese hotel rooms, asking whether they want a girl sent up.

Periodic anti-prostitution campaigns have been launched but nothing like the capital's current operation, say observers.

'The city is in big clean-up mode,' said a posting last month on the website Internationalsexguide.info, which bills itself as 'The Internet's Largest Sex Travel forum' and features graphic, member-submitted updates on where to buy sex.

olympics

China has admitted it could introduce further emergency measures to cut air pollution during the Olympic Games.
One expert said that could mean taking 90% of Beijing's private cars off the streets at particularly bad times.